by Paula Cox
“Everything okay?” she asked over dessert—a delicious ice cream sundae.
A strange, almost nervous frown etched onto his gorgeous bronzed face. Nervous—not exactly a word you’d use to describe Dax Easterling. Something was troubling him, something he didn’t want to tell her.
“Is it about us?” As soon as she’d asked the question, Tiana wished she hadn’t. Why? Because he nodded like a little boy who was about to admit to doing something very wrong. He chewed his lip, took a big swig of wine, and then sucked in a deep breath. All very odd and puzzling behavior for him. What was with him tonight?
“There’s something I need to say.” He suddenly got up, stepped toward her. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to say this.” He dipped into his pocket. Tiana thought he was retrieving his wallet to pay for the meal, so he could say his piece and make a quick getaway. So it couldn’t be good. He hesitated, closed his eyes, nodded to himself.
“What is it?” she asked again.
He pulled a small purple box out of his pocket, then got down on one knee.
“Oh my God!” Tiana put a hand to her chest and gaped down at him. This was not only unexpected, it was surreal—in the most amazing way imaginable.
Is it really happening?
“I’ve never asked for anything in my life,” he said, “and that’s because I’ve never wanted anything this much. I can’t promise you a quiet life, but I can promise it will always be up to us how we live it. I’ll never ask you to be someone you’re not, the same way I’ll never be anything other than the guy you fell in love with. I promise to always protect you for the rest of my life. I want to spend that life with you, and I want us to have a family of our own.” He opened the box, revealing a blue diamond ring that caught the candlelight and seemed from another world, a magic world, one she’d only imagined until now. “I love you, Tiana Crowe. Will you marry me?”
Tearing up, she glimpsed the candle flame flickering in the corner of her eye. A warm, steady breeze blew across the beach; everything in the cabana seemed to react just a fraction, for a split-second. Then all was still again. And the sound of the waves was the sound of a dream fulfilled.
She said yes.
He scooped her up and carried her away her across the sand, far away where there were no lights and no memory. Only each other to look forward to. They made love on the beach, and it was unforgettable.
THE END
Read on for your FREE bonus book – Give In
GIVE IN: Steel Phoenix MC
By Paula Cox
I’ll make her give in to my darkest cravings.
She wanted an adventure.
I needed someone to control.
She was so innocent.
So pure that it’d almost be a shame to ruin her.
Almost.
She should have stayed away.
She should have kept her distance.
But now she’s mine to do with as I please.
I destroy beautiful things, and she’s going to be my masterpiece.
Every touch.
Every breath.
Every moan.
Until she can’t remember her own name.
Because she’ll be too busy screaming mine.
Chapter 1
“You should see the sheer number of assholes walking down the streets here. Astronomical.” Nash Reeves scanned the sidewalk to his right, glancing through the passenger window at the groups of college kids strolling along. Backpacks everywhere. Popped collars. Shiny white shoes. Girls in heels. Townies didn’t dress like that, and while most used the term in an attempt to be derogatory, Nash actually preferred the simple townies to puffed up college assholes.
Mick, his long-time buddy in the Steel Phoenix Motorcycle Club, gave a smoke-ridden laugh through the phone speaker in his car’s dashboard, coughing loudly for good measure at the end. When he was through, Nash heard the guy light up again, talking with a cig in his mouth.
“Yeah, well, those assholes tend to be dependent users, so try not to piss anyone off too much,” Mick said, then gave a low chuckle. “Don’t draw attention.”
Nash’s thick, dark eyebrows shot up, as he turned his attention back to the road. He missed looking at it through his pristine visor, a helmet set snugly around his head. Being in a car again made him feel as claustrophobic as fuck.
“Don’t draw attention?” he repeated, rolling his eyes. “Sorry Mick, don’t know if we’ve ever met in person before, but—”
“Yeah, yeah, try not to let all that time in the gym get to your fucking head,” his buddy fired back, which made him grin. “I’m surprised that head of yours still fits in your helmet.”
“Had to get the sleeves on my jacket taken out last week,” Nash told him—a lie, but he liked to make Mick laugh. “Only way I could get these guns in there without tearing the seams.”
All jokes aside, Nash was absolutely the kind of guy to draw attention just by walking down the street. He’d been a lanky fucker in high school, steadily filling out over the four years, and then he turned his bulk to brawn in his twenties. Towering over most of the general population at six foot five, Nash Reeves was the type of biker who made grown men look the other way and little old ladies clutch at their pearls. And he was damn proud of it. Even if he smoked like a chimney on his downtime, he made sure he was in peak physical condition.
After all, overweight assholes who couldn’t do a mile without puking weren’t the kind of people the Steel Phoenixes wanted in their club, and they definitely weren’t the kind to be privy to all their major coke transactions. That was where he made his cash these days: getting drugs out to the cartels. It was a serious world, the drug kind, and little pansies who looked like they’d blow over at the first sign of a strong wind just didn’t make the cut.
Unless the Phoenixes needed little weasels to snitch on rival gangs—then maybe twiggy assholes could land a coveted position in the club.
So, imagine Nash’s surprise when he was dragged into a meeting at the nightclub he and the other Phoenixes co-owned to be told he had a special assignment. No more running drugs. No more threatening deadbeat junkies. No more shooting at the headquarters of rival clubs. Nash had a specific problem to fix, and it wasn’t going to be easy.
“Why the fuck do you guys think he’s at the university anyway?” he asked, easing the car to a stop at the light.
A cluster of slim, perky college girls paraded across the crosswalk, clearly loving their life of limited responsibilities and binge drinking at four in the afternoon. The bars around campus catered to the large student population at all hours of the day, and it wasn’t uncommon to see a blitzed group from Blackwoods University, stumbling here and there…even when the sun was up. At least these girls had most of their faculties together, even in heels.
“Inside source did some digging,” Mick told him. “All you gotta do is connect the dots, Nash. Find this guy and put a stop to this shit before we lose all our fucking cartel runners.”
Nash gritted his teeth, as he recalled the eight fallen brothers who’d died in the last few months, all of them because someone was leaking their supply runs and deal locations to someone else—and that person was wiping the Steel Phoenixes out. They’d been a proud and long-standing MC for as long as Nash could remember, but someone was killing their guys and taking their coke—and it was about fucking time to put an end to it.
“No promises I won’t crack this guy’s skull the second I find out who he is,” he growled, stepping a little too hard on the gas when the light turned. His massive foot quickly slammed on the brake before he rear-ended the beat-up Honda Civic in front of him.
“Hey”—Mick’s voice crackled through the car’s speakers—“as long as he’s kind of functional, that’s all that matters. We want a confession at least before we put a bullet in his head.”
He shrugged. “Fair enough.”
Nash figured that whoever it was could still confess with all his teeth knocked out, right? We
ll, more like pulled out. One for every guy Nash had lost since that snitch started leaking secrets and ruining lives.
The north end of the town of Blackwoods housed the university, an institution known for its law and medical programs. Kids flocked from all over the country to study there, flooding the usually quiet town with an influx of people every fall. Nash didn’t mind. While college brats were annoying, Mick was right…sometimes they were their best customers, buying in bulk and distributing it to their friends, helping them “de-stress.” Whatever. Different strokes for different folks. Even though he’d been a chain smoker since he was twenty, Nash wouldn’t touch any of the harder stuff they dealt. Even alcohol was a hit or miss kind of thing, and he only partook in drunken shenanigans if all his boys partook, too.
Most of the time, he liked keeping all his faculties in check. He wanted to be confident in his abilities—in control of all aspects of his life.
It annoyed the shit out of him that, as he drew nearer to Blackwoods University, he lacked control. Some guy was out there getting the better of him and his fellow Phoenixes, and as of right now, there was nothing he could do about it.
“Look,” Mick said with a sigh, followed quickly by another short, wheezy cough. “Take the day to get used to things. Scope out the campus. Look into the administration. See if there’s a secretary you can fuck information out of.”
“Classy as always, Micky boy,” Nash laughed, rolling his eyes again. “But I know how to do my job. I’ll get this son of a bitch. You can count on that.”
“I know, Nash. That’s why we picked you to do it. You always deliver.”
Any other guy would have let a compliment like that go to his head, but Nash just took it as fact. He did deliver. Always. Punctuality was big in this business, and Nash arrived everywhere at least a half an hour to an hour early. He dressed the part, no matter the situation. He handled his business confidently and quietly, and that was how he’d ascended the ranks within the club as fast as he did. Most of his coworkers were in their forties, while Nash was only just pushing thirty.
“Look, I can see the main gates,” he announced, as the high-reaching white walls of the university came in to view. “I’ll update you when I have something new.”
“Sounds good, man.”
Licking his lips, Nash reached forward and tapped the little touch-screen control unit in the middle of his car’s dash, effectively disconnecting the call. No need for pleasantries amongst brothers. The nearer he got to the university, inching through midday traffic, the more his stomach turned on itself. If he could help it, Nash avoided the north end of the city. There was more going on in the south. The nightclub was there. His people were there. When he was at the south end of the city, Nash was either on a chair at the bar or on the cushy seat of his bike on the road. There was never a reason to head up to the university—until now.
Sprawling hedges and the last flowers of summer lined the immense wall that divided the town from the institution. Fall was well underway by now, but given the unseasonably warm weather they’d been having lately, most of the flowers had stayed in bloom. As Nash drew nearer, even he had to acknowledge that they made the place look good, especially since they hid the fact that the institution of “higher learning” had effectively constructed their own Berlin Wall to keep themselves separate from the rest of Blackwoods.
He passed through the perpetually open main gates with a bit of a snarl. Something about this place tickled his temper. It wasn’t as if he’d never taken a swing at post-secondary education. Years ago, Nash earned a business degree online, which was actually marginally useful during his time with the Steel Phoenixes. He just never understood the draw to attend to an actual college. Everybody was in everybody’s space all the time. Professors were assholes in person—online too, but at least Nash couldn’t clock them in the face online. The whole atmosphere stunk of elite hyper-competitiveness, and it just wasn’t Nash’s scene.
He didn’t need to compete with anyone. He was always the top dog in everything he did. There was no other competition.
He pulled into a parking lot, grimacing at the fee to keep his car there for the day. He planned to dominate this campus by the time the week was finished.
He was going to find the guy fucking over his Phoenixes. Break his face. Get in. Get out.
Easy.
Chapter 2
Despite his best efforts, the perp Nash was so damned determined to find had yet to make an appearance. Hell, he didn’t even have anyone on his fucking radar yet, and he’d been scoping out Blackwoods University for two days now. Wandering the faculty buildings. Making mental notes about the office staff, the roving security officials, and the overall schedule the college had—when classes generally started and stopped, when it was busiest, and when it was quietest.
All things considered, Nash had done exactly what he was supposed to do. It wasn’t as if he expected the guy who’d been stealing from the Steel Phoenixes and murdering his motorcycle club brothers to just fall into his lap, but after a good two days of patrolling, he thought he might have an inkling toward a lead. Thus far, the club knew their perp was someone in a position of authority, but as Nash roamed the Blackwoods University campus, he slowly came to realize that a position of authority could literally be anyone. Head of security. Top frat brother. Richest kid in school. Professors with tenure. The dean for fuck’s sake. It could have been any of them, and as he roamed the beautiful landscape, he wished Micky had more to tell him. There was a lot of ground to cover, and so far, Nash was basically left sitting around with his thumb up his ass.
At least he knew the campus like the back of his hand. He’d been everywhere possible, three times over, so that he could at least pretend that he knew where he was going. Unfortunately, campus security had taken note of him.
And, really, why wouldn’t they? His first day there, Nash wandered the grounds in his leather jacket, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, another tucked behind his ear. He’d been the dark brooding shadow amidst a sea of naïve kids wanting to make the world a better place with their college education. He’d realized his mistake when he caught one of the security personnel tailing him, so he tailored his wardrobe for the following days so that he could blend in better.
Not that he had a lot of preppy shit in his closet, but he could get away with jeans and a white t-shirt. Remove all the black and leather and combat boots, and suddenly he wasn’t a threat anymore.
Day three was for research. Despite being a biker and a drug runner—amongst other things—Nash knew how to hunker down and do his research. He’d graduated with an online degree and a GPA at the top end of the spectrum—a library wasn’t a foreign place to him. He’d used his morning to research the founding families of the university, to get to know the real power players and the alumni donators in intimate detail. If any had a whiff of scandal surrounding them, he fired the name to Micky, hoping that something might ring a bell in the old guy’s head. Anything to give him a lead, because right now, Nash was groping blindly in the dark and coming up empty.
When the lunch rush moved into the library, many students using their free period to eat and do homework at the same time, the sheer volume of their conversation enough to piss him off, Nash packed up his laptop and headed outside. On the way out of the enormous building, with its century-old oil paintings and priceless texts in glass boxes and echo-inducing tiled floors, he made eye contact with one of the campus security details. The man gave a brief smile and a nod as Nash passed, which he returned to the best of his ability. As he strode away, he glanced over his shoulder, annoyed to find that the uniformed officer was still watching him.
Jaw clenched, he moved away from the imposing buildings—the history and social sciences buildings were dwarfed by the library, nestled on either side of it and spilling out students by the minute. While he wasn’t one for crowds, at least he could disappear from the curious eyes of campus security by going for a smoke on the perfectly m
anicured lawns. Benches and blankets were scattered across the green space, even down at the bottom of the gently rolling hill by a dark blue—man-made, obviously—little lake. Given that the day was warm, it didn’t even surprise him to see a pack of women sunbathing. He looked away quickly, not wanting to stare, and snatched the cigarette out from its place behind his ear, then lit up.
Just as he was setting his lighter back in his pocket, however, Nash collided with another body—hard. It wasn’t a hit that would damage him, but when he looked down at the person he’d run into, he realized he’d probably knocked the wind out of her. She was just a wisp of a thing, slim and small, her curves hidden under a baggy sweater-dress that rode up a little around her hips, revealing a flash of thigh beneath thin tights, as she toppled to the ground. A mess of thick, blonde hair flew across her face as she went down. She landed on the ground with a soft cry, using her hands to brace herself.